Nuclear energy and natural gas will still be considered environmentally sustainable investments in the European Union following a court ruling Wednesday, potentially driving massive amounts of financing toward projects that are not widely considered “green.”
Austria had sued the European Commission, the bloc’s executive, over the inclusion of gas and nuclear in the EU’s classification system for environmentally sustainable economic activities. The system helps direct investments to the projects that are most needed to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
The General Court at the European Court of Justice on Thursday ruled in favor of the commission, dismissing Austria’s action.
Nuclear power is a carbon-free source of electricity but it is not typically labeled as green energy, like solar, wind and other renewables. Generating power this way requires mining and processing uranium to create nuclear fuel, an energy-intensive process that produces emissions. Nuclear reactors generate radioactive waste and there’s a risk of accidents.
Natural, or fossil, gas has lower carbon emissions than coal, but it still warms the planet when burned to produce electricity.
When you include inevitable leaks that happen during the production process, natural gas emits just as much CO2 as coal.
https://rmi.org/reality-check-natural-gas-true-climate-risk/
One thing it doesn’t do is release a whole lot of other non-CO2 pollutants that coal does.
Just build storage and long distance HVDC. Brazil has an HVDC line that’s 2400 km long. With that kind of range, solar panels in Arizona can power Chicago, wind in Nebraska can power New York, and every dam in between can be used as storage. This problem has been solved, and we don’t even need to bring nuclear into it.